Designing the fastest inflatable paddleboard ever!

Mar 17

When Red Paddle Co asked us to come up with the design for the fastest ever inflatable SUP board, we knew we had a challenge on our hands. Designing inflatable boards requires a very different approach to traditional board designï¿½ – a fundamental fact that far too many brands simply don’t get! You cannot simply take ‘solid board’ shapes and design approaches, and apply them to inflatables.

However, having been involved in inflatable board design since 2010,ï¿½ and able to put our name to some of the best selling models on the planet,ï¿½ we’ve got a pretty good handle on how it works. We’re not going to give away our secrets here, but we can tell you that there’s a whole lot of ‘Kiwi’ in the 2017 Red Paddle Co Elite 14′.ï¿½ A comprehensive programme of prototype testing and refinement, using some of the best racers in the country and all our prior experience, led to a shape that appears to go against so many of the established rules of board design.ï¿½ But we had confidence in it. The question was, how would the rest of the world react?

The SUP Company:ï¿½ ï¿½”Probably the fastest inflatable SUP in the world…an absolute rocketship. We put it head to head against high performance 24.5″ hard boards, and this board keeps up. For an inflatable, that’s just unheard of…”

And plenty more of the same.ï¿½ Our final prototype won the 8km distance race at the NZ Nationals, against a fleet of nearly 70 other boards, all solid.ï¿½ This is a seriously design.